THE SETTING – A CRITICAL ELEMENT IN ANY ADVENTURE.
In the spring of 1969, I was a 20-year old Marine, stationed at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. The United States was enduring a terrible, violent convulsion that was rooted in and centered on the civil rights of Black Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been murdered the previous year, and Los Angeles was still clearing away the wreckage of the Watt’s riots, just 5 years previous, that had seen the deaths of 34 people. The National Guard of several states had been called up to bring order and quell riots, and many Blacks began to look on the military, in general, as their enemies.
(Sidebar: when I arrived in Jacksonville, NC, the town that hosts Camp LeJeune, one could still see where the signs saying, “COLOREDS ONLY,” or “NO COLOREDS ALLOWED,” had been sloppily painted-over. As they say nowadays, the struggle was real.)
One of my main duties was to guard the armory of my battalion against the Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, Weathermen, and other extremely dangerous, violent groups who were stealing very heavy weapons from military armories. That year, I was shot at several times by Black Marines, and though I never had occasion to shoot back, the threat of deadly violence was with all of us constantly. I’d developed a very bad attitude toward all Blacks. So in that context, I began…
MY ADVENTURE
I’d bought a bicycle at the PX, and rode it all over the base and the county. One day, riding off-base, I decided to explore a dirt road that wandered off into the dense woods. A mile or two along, I came around a tight bend and found myself face to face with an ancient Black man. Well, “face-to-shotgun” would be more accurate. He glared at me over the breech of that double, and I tried to give him my best harmless puppy dog look. He demanded to know what I was doing around his place, and I assured him I was just exploring, and had no idea anyone was back there.
After a few more exchanges, he broke the shotgun, unloading it. Immensely relieved, I said, “If it’s alright with you, Sir, I’ll just turn around and be out of your hair.”
He said, in an accent I have never been able to duplicate, “Well, since yo already here, you might’s well sit a spell. Y’all drink shine?” Ignorant as I was, after I figured out what he’d said, I knew “shine” meant moonshine whiskey. “No, Sir, but I’m not against trying it.”
He went over to a hump of clay about four feet tall, lifted up a damp burlap curtain, and took out a mason jar of almost clear liquid. He leaned the shotgun against a large pine and sat down by it, inviting me to join him. I’m here to tell you that shine was a smooth and easy as anything I’ve tried, and I’ve put down some darned expensive store-bought. Oh, it was marvelous, and we began to talk. We talked about a lot of things, and it seemed that almost everything circled back to lessons on life and living as a man. Naturally enough, some of those topics included womenfolk, and how to live with them. That was a totally new subject to me, having had no experience with those critters, beyond my Mama, of course! Well, that led to…
MY LESSON
The lesson is in two parts. The first is something the old man said about people, and he included women in that demographic. “Boy, de bes’ way in de wurrld to get a woman, or a man, fo dat matter, to jump de fence is to put a fence aroun’em in the furst place.” He slapped his knee and cackled before passing the jar to me. So that was the first lesson: The surest way of getting someone to betray you – or “jump the fence” – is to make them feel fenced-in. Folks will just naturally get their backs up at the thought of being confined, and I’ve seen many marriages busted because one party or the other thought a higher, stronger fence was the solution.
The second part of that lesson is one that I call upon every day, especially as we endure the current replay of that convulsion of racial violence in the ‘60’s. It is one that has made me a better man in all respects, and I believe it makes me worthy of the trust and respect of others, regardless of our skin color. It is simply this: When two men look each other in the eye, as individuals, with respect and the recognition of each other’s essential humanity, skin color don’t make two cents worth of difference.
Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque
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